


rewind

by intelcore



Series: holism [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: author swears this will make sense after she posts the actual multichap fic but until then D:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27250207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intelcore/pseuds/intelcore
Summary: “Come for me at last?” Hazel tried to keep her voice as even as she could, but her hands shook despite her best effort to the contrary. “And over here I’d been thinking you’d forgotten me.”Thanatos’s smile was cold, but not unkind. “That would have been to your credit, Ms. Levesque.”ends, beginnings, loop de loops
Relationships: Nico di Angelo & Hazel Levesque
Series: holism [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1989676
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	rewind

**Author's Note:**

> hey.

Death was cold, but so was winter, and that was the reason Hazel didn’t realise she was being trailed by it until it was too late. Not that it would have made much difference to her, really. Being as old as she was, she had been waiting for this day for quite some time now. And well. It was December anyway, a dead month if there ever was.

Still, if nothing else, Hazel should have been alert enough to realise who the footsteps belonged to before she looked up from her sketch, unprepared and caught off guard. She put her pencil down and rose to her feet. If she was to die today, clad in pyjamas and completely weaponless, she would do it on her feet at least. 

Death looked as beautiful as ever.

Death also seemed content in coming through the door. For months after the quest to Alaska, hell, for  _ years _ after the Prophecy of the Seven, Hazel had imagined this moment taking place in a multitude of ways, a hundred different scenarios. Thanatos — or maybe even Letus, his Roman form — would sweep in with the evening shadows, melted into the darkest shade of the largest trees. Descend from the heavens with his multicoloured wings. Just appear before Hazel one fine night on the Argo II, come to take her back to the rightful place in the fields of Asphodel, an eternity of forgetfulness. Maybe even done right this time. 

Then she had outgrown the fear of her teenage years, outlived her first life by years and then by decades, and the scenarios grew kinder. More softer around the edges — death would come, but it came to those her age anyway. It came with heart disease and cancer and kidney failure, rather than bloodthirsty monsters, and it came at the end of a long well lived life. Maybe, she even dared to hope, enough time had passed that she would see the rolling green of Elysium instead of the colourless poplars.

But in no scenario did Death simply twist the doorknob to her house in New Rome and walk in with his kind eyes and grim brow.

In every scenario though, Hazel knew what would happen next, and she jutted her chin out defiantly, trying to ignore the burning in her eyes. She would die on her feet, and she would die with her dignity.

“Come for me at last?” Hazel tried to keep her voice as even as she could, but her hands shook despite her best effort to the contrary. “And over here I’d been thinking you’d forgotten me.”

Thanatos’s smile was cold, but not unkind. “That would have been to your credit, Ms. Levesque.”

It wasn’t a joke, but Thanatos’s eyes seemed to soften with his words. 

“Many escape death,” he said. He didn’t say anything else, didn’t phrase it as a question, but it was clear that he expected Hazel to have something to say to that. 

Hazel didn’t have anything to say to that.

Thanatos took the hint. He repeated, “Many escape death. But no one as well as you. I didn’t think my attention would have done any great favours for your case.”

Hazel hadn’t known that dying took so much time now. Thanatos had never been the type to loiter. There had been no kindly, infuriatingly pensive death gods at the site of her first death. Only her mother, pressed into Hazel, face in her hair and body wracking with suppressed sobs. She still felt the warmth of her mother’s tears, the broken echo of her apologies. 

Decades of living a full life, a full  _ second _ life, and the jagged edges of the first still managed to cut her up. Centuries apart now, and Hazel was older than Marie Levesque ever got to be, and she still missed her mother.

“But you’re here to take me now,” Hazel said. “I finally caught your attention.”

“I never thought  _ you  _ would have regrets,” Thanatos said. “Not after the life you’ve led. Eighty years is far more than most people get. Decades unimaginable to demigods, let alone children of the Big Three. You cannot tell me you have regrets?”

“No regrets,” Hazel agreed. Her hair was grey and she found new smile wrinkles in the mirror every day. She hobbled to her friends’ graves when she could, laid flowers on the family she had found, and then lost. Nico’s grave never went a month without fresh lilies, despite her brother being dead for over ten years now. She had lived long enough to hear her joints creak and her gait wobble. Long enough that her life had meant more than waiting for a monster to do her in. Long enough that it had been more living than surviving. “At least, not...many.”

Thanatos inclined his head. “I have heard that’s the best mortals can hope for.”

_ Greeted by death as a friend _ . Hazel guessed he had a point. Hazel might have been interrupted mid-sketch, and she would never get to say goodbye to the sweet Ceres kid who had inherited Arion from her. She would not get to visit her brother’s grave one last time or stroke her horse’s luscious mane and offer a goodbye — but a death in old age, a death heralded by the god of it himself...not many were as lucky as her.

A lump rose in her throat.  _ No _ one had been as lucky as her.

In death at least, she would be reunited with her friends. Roman emperors, car crashes, heart attacks, vengeful monsters, cancers...it had picked them off one by one until it was just Hazel alone.

She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes despite her best efforts to keep them at bay. “I’m not — I don’t regret it. I’m ready. I’ve...I’ve lived a good life. Lives. I got more chances than I thought I would, Even...even  _ unfairly _ , you can say.”

Thanatos didn’t say anything. He just met her eyes, expression unreadable. “”Fair” is the most useless word in matters of life and death, I’m afraid.” He raised his hand. “But regardless. We have spent too much time talking, Ms. Levesque. Far more than I ever spend with the souls I collect.”

Hazel nodded. “I’m ready.” She knew it was useless -- it didn’t matter to Thanatos whether she was ready or not. But it steeled her own bones.

She could feel his coldness seep into her own limbs, at once comforting and frightening. His hold was so icy it  _ burned _ . She watched Thanatos’s form flicker like a dying candle, and with it, her own soul.

Hazel Levesque would die for the second time, face judgement for the second time, enter her father’s kingdom for the second time. She found herself floating away from consciousness and dying, dying,  _ dying _ , closing her eyes—

//

She opened her eyes on a white sand bank. Beyond her stretched green fields. Elysium.

Elysium. Had she been judged? She couldn’t recall who her judges had been, what their verdict was. Elysium? You’d think she would remember getting sent to eternal paradise.

And then she saw the river separating her from the green fields of the blest. The Styx cut an angry line before Hazel, bubbling with broken oaths and shattered promises and discarded dreams.

She was on the other side. Not in the Elysian Fields like she had thought but instead…

She turned behind in recognition and sure enough, millions of poplars and grey shades dotted the scenery. The endless Fields of Asphodel, as dreary and terrifying as she remembered it.

Her heart sank. Asphodel. After it all. Asphodel? A second chance squandered and she couldn’t even remember the verdict. She raised a hand to her aching head, a hand that was unwrinkled and soft, and —  _ unmistakably a thirteen year old’s _ .

Wait.

A shadow crossed her periphery. Hazel lifted her eyes to a flash of black iron, a Stygian sword raised as a torch. A young boy no older than thirteen was bundled up in a black overcoat several sizes too big for him, dark hair unbrushed and falling into his eyes.

Hazel was looking at her dead brother, a brother who looked several decades younger than when she’d last seen him, when she’d pressed a kiss to his wrinkled cheek in the New York hospital room. 

Nico looked very much not old and very much not dead and very much like he didn’t know her yet. Not properly.

“You’re different,” he said, and had he ever sounded so young? His voice was cracking, and was that a zit above his right eyebrow? “A child of Pluto. You remember your past.”

“You’re alive,” Hazel said. Her voice sounded ragged even to her own ears. She longed to reach out and cup his cheek, hug him so hard that she would never let go. She had missed him so much.

But Nico didn’t seem to even know her. 

“I’m Nico di Angelo,” he said, young in a way she didn’t remember. But those words she _did_ remeber, as if it were yesterday when she had heard them and not more than sixty years ago. Her heart sank further. “I came looking for my sister. Death has gone missing, so I thought…I thought I could bring her back and no one would notice.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> someday i will post the full fic that goes with these two random, seemingly unconnected one shots. until then D: enjoy the confusion loves!
> 
> you can drop by to say hi at [seavoice](%E2%80%9Cseavoice.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D) on tumblr!


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